Speech #890239975

Mr. Speaker. I have taken the floor today to give the Members of the House a preliminary report on the operations of the Immigration Act of 1965. The principal objective of that legislation was to end forever. by abolishing the discriminatory national origins quota system. a situation under which relatives of U.S. citizens or resident aliens. and skilled professionals and technicians. were obliged to wait as long as a decade before they could come to the United States. This resulted from their misfortune in being born in a country which had been allocated a very small annual quota of immigrants to the United States under a system which. in effect. had proclaimed the superiority of certain races of peoples over others in their desirability as immigrants. This was true even though the alien immigrant had been granted a technical preference in immigrating by reason of his relationship or skill. The Department of State has informed me that on July 1. 1966. at the beginning of the new fiscal year and only 7 months after Initial operation under the new law. backlogs and waiting lists have been wiped out and an immigrant visa is immediately available to any alien immigrant for whom a preference has been authorized by reason of relationship or skill. The single exception relates to Italianborn brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens. where there has been an extraordinarily heavy demand. Over 50.000 close relatives of U.S. citizens and persons with high skills urgently needed in the United States were admitted for permanent residence during the first 7 months of operations under the new immigration law. There had been some concern over the socalled labor provisions of the new law. Bills have been introduced to repeal these provisions. They were originally put into the new law to insure that Immigrants not entitled to preferences would not be admitted to the United States if their admission could displace American workers or adversely affect wages and working conditions in the United States. I have been watching the operation of this new section closely and became convinced that the interpretations of the law had been unnecessarily restrictive. The requirements of a specific employer in each case had almost completely nullified any distinction between preference and nonpreference immigrants. Overly complicated forms and too many review stages within the State and Federal Departments of Labor had unnecessarily delayed the processing of applications. Three weeks ago I met with Labor Secretary Willard W.